Community Page Format:


  • Page Title (Full)
  • Tell Us Your Story: We want to know what you know.

  • Tab Title (Short)
  • How Do You Share Your Digital Stories?

  • Community Type
    • Community of Practice (CoP)

    • This community will share their digital stories and how they were created. Community members will collaborate, review and critique each others work. The use of Microsoft's Photo Story 3 to tell stories will be the foundation and common interest of this group.

  • Participant Profile Information
    • Name
    • E-mail
    • School District and Location
    • Job Title
    • Years of experience in education
    • PC operating system
    • Internet Connection
    • Hobbies

  • Abstract
  • The use of a digital media in the classroom can be a powerful learning tool for students. The creation of digital media by students allows them to express themselves through the use of digital images, video, and audio. Writing in the classroom can be a difficult task for many students and the use of digital media can be a tool to inspire them to write in the form of scripts and story boards. Digital storytelling can provide another form of assessment for teachers and give students the opportunity to present what they have learned in a way that is more engaging and entertaining for them as well. The decrease in the cost of digital media tools and the emerging open source applications makes it possible for all students in a classroom to have the opportunity to express themselves with digital media.


  • Full Description
  • Introduction
  • In this virtual story telling community facilitated by Bill Sheskey of the Curriculum 21 team you will have the opportunity build and share digital stories using Microsoft's Photo Story 3. You will share your stories and techniques with the community so that you can ultimately guide your students to build their own digital story projects to demonstrate learning. The advantage of these types of projects is that it gives you differentiated forms of assessment that integrate technology into the learning process for your students.

  • Digital Stories Tell More Than a 1000 Words

Microsoft’s Photo Story 3 picture presentation software is an easy to use and engaging tool for teachers and students to present digital pictures that demonstrate learning in the classroom.

The objective of this community is to create a digital stories that relate to your curriculum content areas. During the creative process you will have the opportunity to share your work and receive feedback from other members of the community. The process of you building the digital story will provide you with the skills and strategies to model digital storytelling projects to your students.


Digital Story Title, Essential Question, Script Outline and Images

Developing your digital story title, essential question and outline your digital story script. Let's begin engaging our students!

1. Create the title for your digital story, the main objective of the story, and
the state standards your project meets.

2. Do your essential questions "hook" your students to the desired subject content and curriculum standards?

3. Are your essential questions motivating your students with content relevant vocabulary built into them?

4. Prepare an outline of images and the script. Example, how many slides, what kind of images, what kind of music and what kind of voice recording that will be used.
You do not have to write a word for word script. Insert a sample of at least 2 of your images in your outline.

5. Review the "fair use" and "citing images" resources and explain how you will cite images in your project.


  • Resources
  • Required Tools:
  • A computer with Windows XP operating system
  • Photo Story 3 software
  • Windows Media Player Version 10 or higher
  • Digital camera and memory for images
  • A computer microphone
  • Suggested Tools:
  • Flash memory stick for portable saving of files

Learning Modules: The links and files in these modules will not be live until we build the community platform (Moodle?)
These are listed so that you can see the order of the learning activities associated with each module.


Module One
Lets Begin! Just follow the Topic #1 hyperlinks from the top to the bottom of the list below to participate in the online discussions and complete the activities. Have fun filling up your digital story toolbox.
  • Why Use Photo Story 3? Resource
  • Photo Story 3 Questionnaire
  • TOPIC#1 REFLECTION - REQUIRED POSTING Forum
  • Photo Story Project Tools Resource
  • Getting Photo Story 3 Resource
  • Photo Story 3 Download file
  • Windows Media Player file
  • Storytelling Project Objectives and Examples Resource
  • DIGITAL STORY REVIEW-GRADED Assignment
  • Elementary Science and Art Project file
  • Trash Can Math file
  • Fun Way to Learn Vocabulary file
  • Science Demonstration file
  • Project Rubric


Module Two
Digital Story Title, Essential Question, Script Outline and Images
Photo Story Title, Objective and Standards - Required Posting Forum
· Education "Fair Use" Copyright Resource PDF document
· Citing Images Resource
· ANALYZING ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
· WRITING ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
· DIGITAL STORY SCRIPT OUTLINE



Module Three
Let's Build a Photo Story!
This topic contains the steps for building your story. Microsoft's online Photo Story 3 tutorial is linked in this topic below. Please post any technical questions or additional resources that you would like to share with other learners in the Topic discussion forum.
  • Starting Photo Story 3 for Windows PDF document
  • Step 2 - Import and Arrange Your Pictures PDF document
  • Step 3 - Adding Titles to Your Slides PDF document
  • Step 4 - Adding Customized Motion PDF document
  • Step 5 - Adding Background Music PDF document
  • Step 6 - Saving Your Story PDF document
  • Step 7 - Viewing Your Story PDF document
  • Microsoft's Photo Story 3 Online Tutorial file
  • Photo Story 3 Technical Questions




Module Four

Additional Digital Story Tools
The hyperlinks located in Topic #4 will provide you with additional resources for enhancing your projects. These resources are used extensively by teachers and please feel free to add any additional resources that you find in the Topic #4 discussion forum. The Picnik photo editing application and the Audacity sound recording program are particularly useful for the imaging and audio portions of your project.

You may find it helpful to make your project images in PowerPoint and then convert them to a .jpeg image that you can insert into your project. Use the resource linked below to do this.

  • Multi Media Project Tools file
  • Teacher Resource Page file
  • Windows Sound Recorder file
  • Use PowerPoint to Create Your Images file
  • Project Technical Questions and Additional Resources



    • Video
    • I will provide sample digital stories when the site is ready to launch.

    • Audio/Podcast
    • I will provide sample audio files when the site is ready to launch.

    • PowerPoint

    • Document
    • The following are the steps to build a digital story using Photo Story 3 and the project rubric.



















    • Other

  • Widgets
      • There are many kinds of "widgets" that can be connected to your community content area. Some formats will be activated as a "default" setting by the system, but others can be added as needed to make your community as dynamic and social as possible. Describe what widgets you'd like to see in your communty and how it will be used by participants. We'll take care to add the widget on your community page. Here is a partial list of possible widgets:

    • Moodle Course Software
    • The Moodle platform provides all the tools needed in this community. I have experience in using Moodle as a learning community platform.

    • Kaltura collaborative video editing services

    • Blog

    • Community bookmarks

    • Newsfeeds

    • Chatrooms

    • Social Media Messaging (Twitter, Facebook, Ning, eMail, IM, etc.)

    • Polls

    • Calendars

    • Project Management**